Serious and Organised Crime: Prüm Convention

Damian Green Excerpts

Tuesday 8th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green (Ashford) (Con)]

I support the Government’s proposals, partly as a result of my own Home Office experience of seeking to fight not just criminality, but, specifically, cross-border criminality. Members on both sides of the House have made the powerful argument that taking this decision will actually make our streets and citizens safer. I cannot think of a better use of parliamentary time, particularly at this moment. The Government’s decision could not be more timely, given the terrible events not just in European countries, but around the world, in recent weeks and months. It is well worth this House doing everything we can to protect our citizens and to reassure them that everything is being done to make our streets as safe as possible.

It is relatively unusual for the Home Office to be able to invite the House to take such a decision on the basis of hard evidence. When adopting a new policy, it is often the case that we have to assume that it is going to work. Sometimes it does and sometimes it does not, but in this case we have had the benefit of the pilot, which has been much discussed, and it seems to me that the arguments cannot be gainsaid at all. Clearly, even the small-scale pilot has already made this country’s streets safer, so extending that so that we can experience the full benefits of the Prüm measures is extremely sensible.

That is why the proposal is supported by people throughout the criminal justice system. The Home Secretary has herself quoted a number of senior police officers, including the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, the director general of the National Crime Agency and a chief constable who has been involved in a particularly sensitive case. It is interesting that, further down the criminal justice pipeline, the Director of Public Prosecutions also supports the proposal. She has said that it will

“reduce the number of unsolved crimes, such as murder and rape, committed by foreign nationals, and provide an improved service to the public”

and victims—a group we should always be particularly concerned about.

The advantages are spread across a number of areas. They include not just the simplified processes to request information and data, though they are vital, but efficiency gains in international searching, which will allow simultaneous searches to take place in a number of countries at once. That is a significant step forward in practical crime fighting.

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

Speaking as one of the forces of darkness referred to earlier, I abhor giving more power to any other body, but I accept my right hon. Friend’s argument about the international element; it is not just about the European element. In that case, I support the sharing of data, because it makes our streets safer. What I object to is that it is framed in this European way, but we are where we are, unfortunately.

[Damian Green]

I can only say to my hon. Friend that it would be absurd to let the best be the enemy of the good. It would be wonderful if 185 states all had the technical capacity and ability to exchange information in this way, but they do not. In fact, I think only 21 of the current member states of the European Union can actually do this. I know that this is not true of my hon. Friend, but I sense that other hon. Friends want to use that as a reason not to sign up to the proposal, but that is nonsense, because it would continue to leave our streets not as well protected as we would all wish them to be.

[Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)]

For me, the problem of cross-national justice is that countries are sometimes very keen to convict foreigners, and there is therefore a propensity to miscarriages of justice. We saw that with the plane spotters in Greece, as my right hon. Friend may remember. He has of course been in the position of suffering a politically driven miscarriage of justice. What is interesting for me is that the Home Office has done a very good job in preventing the false positives and miscarriages of justices. Does he agree?

[Damian Green]

As so often, I do agree with my right hon. Friend. He is right that, for obvious reasons, I am not an uncritical admirer of everything that the police do. I regard myself as a candid friend of the police. It is extremely important that the technical measures that can be taken to minimise false positives and possible miscarriages of justice are taken at all times. I agree with him that the reassurances the Home Secretary has been able to give on that matter are extremely important.

Before I move on to the potential risks, I want to mention one advantage: access to Eurodac, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) referred. Eurodac is the EU-wide database of the finger- prints of asylum seekers and illegal migrants. This change will allow it to be used in criminal investigation searches. It will be precisely aimed at potential criminals, not at innocent people who may have been caught up in something. That underpinning safeguard is absolutely key.

The overwhelming advantage is the straightforward one of speed. Anyone who looks at practical law enforcement will know that speed of response is hugely important in making police operations more effective, particularly internationally. Regrettably, it is topical to say that this is particularly true when the police are attempting to deal with a terrorist outrage. The fact that it may take minutes or 24 hours, rather than months, to get evidence is absolutely vital. The advantages are therefore clear cut and widespread.

People have expressed two areas of risk associated with this system. One is genuine and the other is the result of applying some wrong-headed ideology. Let me deal with the genuine one first: the fear that the measure will intrude on our privacy or damage our data protection and therefore adversely affect our civil liberties. I take that very seriously. It is extremely important to deal with security alongside other civil liberties. I agreed with a lot of what the shadow Home Secretary said, but I do not agree—I may have slightly misunderstood him—when he said that we must have security, and once we have security we can worry about civil liberties. I think that security is one of the important civil liberties that Governments should guarantee, but other civil liberties are extremely important. We must try to defend them all in parallel and, if necessary, strike the right balance. I think that the measure does that.

There will be stringent safeguards. I return to the point that the key safeguard is to ensure that the measure is used to target convicted criminals. It seems to me that if we use large-scale databases, particularly on an international basis, we want to target people convicted of a crime, not just to trawl the records of innocent people. That is absolutely essential at a national level, and it is even more essential at a European level. The proposals before the House pass that test. I imagine that that is why the National DNA Database Ethics Group has given this a “wholehearted welcome”, which is quite a good badge of respectability for the Home Office.

Like other hon. Members, I have read carefully what Big Brother Watch has said about the measure. It is an organisation that does a lot of good and helps to hold Governments to account. I confess that I was slightly surprised at the tone of the response from Big Brother Watch, which welcomed the safeguards that the Home Secretary has introduced. It did say that there were areas of concern, but against the normal standards of comments by civil liberties groups on Home Office proposals, that is warm approval. That should be taken seriously.

I echo the words of the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) and hope that the Minister deals with the vehicle registration database and the specific worries that Big Brother Watch has raised. It asks:

“Will searches only be for serious crimes or will they include offences such as speeding or driving in a bus lane?”

It also asks:

“Will foreign police forces have access to ANPR cameras or historical ANPR data?”

The House ought to be reassured on those points.

All those civil liberties issues pose a genuine risk, but I think that they have been dealt with. The other line of criticism, which appears in the amendment, says that we should not use these procedures because they are procedures of the European Union. That is a damaging ideology. These measures help the police to catch criminals, prevent terrorist attacks, save lives and keep our streets safer. In those circumstances, it is irresponsible to say that we should not sign up because of an anti-European ideology and a fear of the European Court of Justice. The British people know that we live in a dangerous world and, frankly, will not forgive politicians who make it more dangerous by indulging in anti-European gesture politics in this field.

It has been argued that there are other ways to achieve the same effect, but it has been amply demonstrated in the course of the debate that nothing that is available is as efficient as this measure.

[Mr Andrew Turner]

Will my right hon. Friend assist me by saying whether Iceland, for instance, should be encouraged to join?

[Damian Green]

Iceland is not a member of the European Union. If Iceland wished to sign some kind of deal with the European Union, I assume that it would be open to Iceland to do so, but I have seen no sign that it does. It is not within the purview of this House to dictate to the Icelandic Government and people what they should do. I imagine that they want to keep their streets safe as well.

[Mr David Davis]

I take my right hon. Friend’s point about the European Court of Justice, but the fear in respect of some of the protections he has talked about, such as the extreme case of whether the database is used for speeding offences, is that the Court could change the guidelines in a way that is outside our control. I do not think that it is true that that could happen in this case, but I think that he should address the point, rather than just dismiss it.

[Damian Green]

I do not dismiss it, although my right hon. Friend is right that it is not true in this case. The Prüm measures specifically say where the European Court of Justice has jurisdiction, and it is quite limited. One thing that the Court seeks to do is to defend individual citizens against over-mighty states.

[Mr Davis]

I know.

[Damian Green]

My right hon. Friend knows that. The idea that everything that the European Court of Justice does is bad or somehow goes against civil liberties and freedoms is simply wrong, as I am sure he would acknowledge.

[The Minister for Immigration (James Brokenshire)]

It is worth putting it on the record that the Prüm decisions are caveated by national law. Article 12 states that the searches must be conducted

“in compliance with the searching Member State’s national law.”

[Damian Green]

I am deeply grateful to my right hon. Friend. I hope that that reassures those who have doubts on that score.

It has become fashionable in this House in recent days to quote dead communist dictators.

[Mrs Main]

Not on this side.

[Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)]

You’re the first.

[Damian Green]

I may be the first Member to do so on this side of the House, but I am sure that I will not be the last.

In this case, I want to refer to a concept that Lenin introduced: that of the useful idiot. It refers to people who do something by accident that gives comfort to those whom they normally oppose. I am afraid that some arguments against this proposal fall into that category. I know that my right hon. and hon. Friends who are advancing these arguments are not idiots, so I urge them to think hard, and possibly not to press the amendment.

This kind of European co-operation in fighting serious crime and terrorism is essential in today’s dangerous world. It is to the European Union’s credit that it has devised a practical system to help keep people safer, and to the credit of the British Government that they have agreed to sign up to it. I hope that tonight the House will agree on that significant step forward in fighting terrorism and serious international crime.